Wing It
by cruces
Summary: Steve gets modern technology; Thor might, too.


"It's not the losing," Steve hears Thor say in the aftermath.

The inside of his nose is scrubbed raw from the smoke, there's a sludge of blood sliding down his throat, and his fingers burn and sting from a hard fall wrong-side-down from thirty feet up, but Steve is glad to know his ears are still working fine. Admittedly there's a tiny ringing in his left but somehow that works, hollows out some of the sadness in Thor's voice. Steve looks up from where he's sprawled in the churned-up dirt of the deserted field where Loki had zapped them, made several extraordinarily unlikely claims about the parentage of various members of the team, had some kind of angry crying episode followed up by a stretch of pummeling Thor, and finally loosed some kind of blast that had flung them to all corners of the field. There didn't seem to be much point to the whole production other than making Thor clench his jaw and make half-hearted attempts to smash his brother's head in, but Steve figured it was an improvement that Loki had moved the fight out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the guy was mellowing out, or just getting some down time—for some definition of down—before gearing up to go through, and put them through, another crisis. Steve sighs.

"I don't think we lost," Steve tells Thor. Thor looks down at him gravely, mercifully blocking out some of the afternoon light. Steve blinks. The spots in his eyes look like the sharp white points of Loki's teeth.

"As long as you can stand up at the end," he adds. Thor continues to look serious and attentive as if he's saying something profound. The dirt is surprisingly warm, probably from all those energy blasts from earlier. It would be downright comfortable if not for the pointy rocks stabbing straight into his neck.

"You okay?" Tony says from somewhere above.

"Nothing broken," Steve replies, then lets Thor pull him up as if he were no different from the Steve who used to fly through the air, arms and legs akimbo. Most of those times he'd landed the wrong side up, too. He's never needed anyone's hand to help him back up but he's always been grateful for it all the same. Men whose hands he'll never shake again would agree with him so there's no need to feel ashamed: it's a comfort.

"Where are we?" he asks no one in particular.

"Upstate New York," Natasha says, not looking up from bandaging her knee. Steve's glad to see that she's mostly all right, but still winces because one, that looks like it _hurts_, even though you'd never be able to tell it from her face, and two, Thor is clapping the dust off his shoulders.

"Thanks," he coughs out. Thor nods. Tony lands a few feet away. His faceplate is missing and streaks of blood paint his face. He looks cheerful; it is frankly, appalling. "I am also in _excruciating_ pain, by the way," Tony reassures him, seeing the expression on his face. "But years of standing still to pose for magazine covers has perfected by ability to maintain a winsome smile."

Thor murmurs something about winning and losing again, and it must be that the ringing has gotten worse because Steve can't make any of it out, enhanced hearing or not. "Can you call us a transport?" he yells at Clint, who is gingerly picking his way down from what used to be a lovely stand of cypress trees. Clint raises a hand in acknowledgment and then shouts, "Shotgun."

"Shut up, you had shotgun last time," Natasha calls back as she picks herself up to hop on one foot.

"No, you," Clint says back aimiably, limping his way towards them.

Steve would roll his eyes but they feel like they've been fused to his eyelids, and anyway Tony does it for everyone. He's got it down to an art.

"Where's H– Bruce?" Steve asks.

"I'm okay," a tiny voice calls out from somewhere in the direction of the sun. "Can someone throw me some pants?"

Steve nods to Clint, who nocks an arrow with a string attached to a nondescript S.H.I.E.L.D supply pack to his bow.

"Seriously?" Tony asks as Clint fires the arrow. Steve doesn't even care, really, he feels ready to fall over, but he can't, not yet.

"You kind of almost hit me," Bruce says from far away.

"Still working on the aerodynamic delivery system, sorry!" Clint yells.

Thor is looking up and something inside the part of Tony's helmet that isn't destroyed beeps. The rush of wind from the transport's feels like relief, even though Steve knows it's nothing more than a pause for them to catch their breath.

"Let's go," Steve says wearily, "regroup."

The pilot doesn't seem to mind when Tony directs him to make a detour to a "famous amazing fantastic little joint around here, have you been?" — "vegan" — he's even brought along a stack of novels with covers in the most hideous spectrum of the rainbow, pastel. The pilot obliges them by parking the airship in a mostly empty lot and proceeds to be engrossed in the tale of what looks to be a mermaid pirate (merman pirate?) and a fainting woman in a seaweed dress. "It's _slipstream_," the pilot says testily when Tony attempts to joke about the man's choice of reading, and Steve hauls him out of the craft before Tony can mortally offend someone who could possibly crash them into the side of one of upstate New York's gently rolling hills.

The establishment is closing up but a half minute later with Tony the restaurant owner, an elderly lady with an incredible fruit hat and her chef son, turn back on the lights and pulls several tables together for them to use. Chicken wings and fries sound just fine to Steve's still slightly ringing ears, although Natasha and Bruce have to explain to Thor the concept of a squawking creature descended from giant ancient beasts that once ruled the Earth out of which humans now make delicious bite-sized morsels lathered in sauce.

Thor appears concerned when he learns of the former status of ancestral chickens and the fate of their diminutive descendants, but perks up at the mention of "delicious," on which Tony butts in to solemnly swear. Steve has to wonder about the state of his life when things become surreal not when someone who claims to be a god from another planet shows pity for the long-dead forebears of what they're about to wolf down but rather when a man in a battered flying metal suit produces wet-naps and hand sanitizer from God knows where and starts waxing poetic about the flavor profile of "The Wing from the Depths of HELL."

Steve pulls out his phone to check the weather forecast and looks up to see several of his team—not Thor, engrossed in conversation with a nervous Bruce—looking at him strangely. "When did you get that?" Tony asks as he pulls himself away from the last of his suit.

"It's just my smart-phone," Steve tells him with a shrug. He's been told that it's meant to make you feel smart, and connected, and _modern_, but really it just reminds him how his life now mirrors the preprogrammed speed dial setting that it came with for S.H.I.E.L.D contacts and government minders. "I'm checking the weather," he informs Tony, deadpan, "and next I will 'text message' Fury to apprise him of our situation here."

"Oh my god give me that," Tony says, trying to grab the phone from across the table.

"No! I got this," Steve says, elbowing the hand away and continuing to tap the keys with deliberate slowness and cracking a grin when Clint laughs and Tony threatens to get back into the suit. Natasha looks amused and even Bruce is smiling a little, and Steve doesn't really need a reason, ever, to annoy Tony, but it's nice. Thor's the one sitting closest to him, and waits until Tony is distracted, but Steve wasn't texting anyone anyway so he lets Thor pluck the phone out of his hands and examine it.

"_3G_?" Tony groans, and throws up his hands. "I'll _build_ you a phone, it'll make coffee and read you your morning paper and everything."

"I can make my coffee myself, thanks," Steve says.

Tony pouts, no doubt consigning a thousand blueprints of robotic phone-shaped coffeemakers to the waste bin, never to see the light of day. "What about you?"

"It is lovely, as many Earth things are," Thor noncomittally replies, handing the phone back to Steve. The wings arrive just at that moment, and everyone falls silent for a blissful while. At some point between inhaling greasy, spicy chicken and hot fries they order pitchers, and Steve finds himself listening with interest to Thor's thesis about goodness and life, the superlative qualities of chicken wings and how they compare to the culinary delights of a planet whose name Steve is not even going to try to pronounce, and how smart-phones are actually like marbles, and how all of this is part of the same grand whole, although the last part sounds a little like just the beer talking.

From across the table Tony scoffs, "Lay it on me when you've got something science," and Thor huffs.

"They are one and the same."

"_Magic_," Tony says.

"The world is far more than the parts that fit one another with exactitude, and never more than the space emptied by the seams joining one thing to the next."

"What," Tony says.

"One does not require the object," Thor says, gesturing towards Steve, "if one's mind comprehends what the thing contains, and completes."

Tony takes another bite of his piece of the wing from Hell.

"Cirles," Thor says. "Upon circles, like so," he adds, carving out great chunks of empty space with his arms. Natasha gracefully moves her head to one side to avoid being knocked out and reaches for another honey barbeque wing.

"Like Venn diagrams!" Steve exclaims. Thor beams; Tony adds another frown line to his expression of disapproval.

"That's... not... science..."

"That's social science," Bruce's voice trails out helpfully from somewhere behind a wreckage of bones. A tiny muscle under Tony's right eye twitches.

"That's fascinating," Steve says. "Go on," he says to Thor. There are a few ballpoint pens in one of his belt pockets; he takes one out and doodles a Venn digram for Thor's benefit on a napkin that is not too terribly soiled, considering. Thor nods heartily, and takes the pen and draws more circles. "Oh please," Tony says, but pulls out a stack of unused napkins from under Natasha's elbow—probably if he was less drunk her icy glare would have made him think twice—for them to draw on. The owner comes by to check on how they're doing, and Steve's the only one who looks up from their task.

"We need more napkins, ma'am," he tells her, apologetic. And a million things to try to fill up the empty spaces in their imperfect little world. But above all: more wings.

The universe obliges.

•••••

End


End file.
